5 Ways to Improve Your Technology Troubleshooting

A businessman selecting a Troubleshooting button on a futuristic display with a concept written on it.

When you suffer from a technical difficulty, it’s your responsibility to ensure that it is handled in a timely fashion, whether reporting the issue to IT or taking care of it yourself. However, the process of troubleshooting can save you from waiting around while IT tinkers with your device’s settings. Let’s examine the five stages of troubleshooting and how you might try them yourself to improve your technology troubleshooting for your business.

Collect Information

First, you need to collect information that you can use to address the problem. What is the issue, and what is the scope? Is it one little thing on your PC, or is it a network-wide issue? If you collect as much information as you can, you’ll have an easier time talking to IT about it. Chances are they will try to replicate the issue, and all of this information will be invaluable towards this end.

Analyze Your Approach

Next, you’ll need to use this information to determine the best path toward resolving your issue. Is there anything relevant in the data you can fix the problem? You may have to adjust your approach based on your response to this question. It would be best to put a plan that is data-informed whenever possible.

Implement Your Solution

With a solid plan in place, you can implement the proposed solution. You’ll want to be extremely careful, though. You should only implement a solution that you know solves the problem at hand. If you are not confident in your technology, you should do more research until satisfied. The wrong answer could put you at a disadvantage.

Assess the Solution

After implementation, you’ll have to assess whether or not the solution worked. Some of the explanations you might implement are little more than stop-gaps that provide temporary fixes for more significant problems, which is fine in its way, so long as that is how you treat the solution. It’s your responsibility to know when to implement something better.

Document the Process

Now that you have a solid solution in place, you’ll want to ensure that your internal documents have recorded the processes for the fix. This helps others within your organization understand the spot for later on, and it can keep others from engaging in a long and challenging (and now unnecessary) troubleshooting process.

AE Technology Group wants to help you improve your technology troubleshooting and many other technology needs for your business. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.

Start Viewing Your Business’ IT Realistically

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When you get excited to implement a new technology solution for your business, it is easy to let the expectation blind you to the actual value you get from it right out of the box. It’s no fault of your own; it’s human to have expectations that exceed reality. In business, though, you must keep these misconceptions in mind, especially when implementing your technology systems.

The Latest is the Greatest

When a new solution is released and big names in your industry start to implement them, it’s easy to hop on the hype train and implement a solution before thinking it over. The hard truth of the matter is that new is most definitely not better. While it is true that more recent technology has certain benefits over older systems, the extent of this truth will vary wildly depending on your specific needs and current situation.

Be sure to look at your existing infrastructure and ask yourself what problems these new technologies can resolve and whether or not they are worth the price point. It helps to take a day or two to think it through and the perspective of a third party like AE Technology Group. There’s a reason why external auditors exist, after all; having that unbiased opinion can be incredibly valuable when making decisions.

My Staff Know How to Use Technology

This next expectation assumes that your staff will know how to use your new technology. The reality is that it takes more than a simple tutorial to train your team on a new system. It can often take months for them to get caught up to speed and use a new solution in a way that facilitates productivity. In particular, employers tend to look to young people as technology experts, but this is not necessarily accurate.

When implementing new solutions, you should assume that all of your employees have minimal knowledge of the system. You can then build a training program around that minimal baseline.

“It can’t happen to me…”

Perhaps the worst expectation you can have in business is that an unfortunate circumstance such as data loss or a hacking attack won’t happen to you. No company is immune to these fatal disasters that threaten the continuity of your business. SMBs, in particular, are guilty of this thought process, as they assume that they are not high-profile enough to suffer from hacking attacks. All businesses need to prepare for such an event with proactive security measures and data backup systems.

Once you can get past unrealistic expectations for your business technology, it becomes much easier to improve productivity. Let AE Technology Group help you manage expectations and implement any new IT solution for your business. To get started, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.

The Pros and Cons of AI for Your Business

Copilot

Artificial intelligence used to be the work of science fiction, but nowadays, it is seen as very real and a possibility for businesses of all types. There are benefits to artificial intelligence, but it could also create problems in the future. Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of AI.

A Brief Definition of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is when you have a computer perform a task rather than a human being. Artificial intelligence programs are good at analyzing patterns and potential outcomes in data; they then use this feedback to act. This is often how image recognition processes take place. It’s AI in action!

AI can be used in several different types of technologies, and it has a broad range of applications.

Advantages of Business AI

Here are some of the primary benefits of AI for business:

Business pattern optimization

Consider how much data your business generates every day and think about analyzing all of it for patterns, opportunities, and inefficiencies. It is impossible without the help of AI. Using this technology, AI can look at data and deliver predictions and look for opportunities to address concerns, maximize revenue growth, condense sales cycles, and improve return on investment.

Cost reduction

AI also makes a case for automation, meaning that the costs of labor-intensive tasks can be completed automatically, yielding lower prices and increasing revenue in the process.

Revenue Increases

You can also improve processes regarding your human resources by identifying new opportunities to bring in more revenue using the data and analysis performed by AI. This technology can also be used to optimize external processes, like your marketing strategies.

It’s not all sunshine and roses for AI, however.

Disadvantages of Business AI

Let’s break down some of these drawbacks:

Fear and misunderstanding

AI is seen as a threat in pop culture, and when it’s not, it is often seen as the end-all-be-all for problems that must be solved. The reality is that neither of these is an accurate representation of AI. The truth is that AI has definitive limitations placed on it that keep it from solving all our problems and dominating the world.

The data required

An automated system is great and all, but it can’t get anything done without the data it’s referencing or analyzing. Plus, the amount of data required is staggering, and managing this amount of data can be difficult.

How to explain AI

Some AI systems don’t fully explain how they reached their conclusions, something that can become a significant problem if things start to go awry.

Is AI a Good Tool for Businesses?

In some ways, AI is perfect for businesses, but only for those who want to put in the effort to understand its limitations and risks. AE Technology Group can help your organization improve its processes, including automation. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.

Break Your Break/Fix Cycle in 2021

Stressed computer engineer working on broken cables screaming in frustration

There are generally two approaches to technology maintenance. One of them addresses issues as they appear, and the other involves addressing possible issues before they become operational problems. How does your business go about technology maintenance? If it’s the first, also known as “break-fix” IT, then you are going about things the wrong way and leaving a ton of savings on the table.

One appropriate way of thinking about technology maintenance is like imaging IT as your car. When you purchase a vehicle, you try to take care of it as best you can because it is an investment that will hopefully yield a return on the costs associated with it. You want to keep it on the road so that you can keep getting value out of it over an extended period of time.

But what happens when your car starts to make strange noises and inconsistencies with operations start to appear? If these issues are small enough, you might think you can get away with ignoring them for a little while, as the car still gets you to your destination. If you ignore them long enough, though, you might find yourself stuck on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck to bring it to a garage.

From here, the folks at the garage take a look at the engine and try to diagnose your problems. The mechanics find that something serious is causing a problem within your vehicle that must be addressed, and the vehicle simply cannot function until the repairs have been made. You are left with questions about how much the repair job will cost, how long it will take, and whether or not your budget can handle it.

The same problems occur when small businesses run into technical problems. They might want to address these issues before they become problematic, but they don’t have the budget or the ability to do so. They try to avoid facing the problem until it becomes so bad that it cannot be ignored any longer, a practice that eventually creates more problems later on down the line. It’s better to resolve issues before they become this serious.

Relying on break-fix IT is simply not the best way to approach technology issues, especially when you don’t know what the problem is or how to address it. It’s better to outsource this responsibility to someone who can handle routine maintenance in order to prevent these types of costly breakdowns. That’s where our proactive IT services come into play!

With our knowledge and expertise, we can ensure that your business’ IT systems are monitored and maintained for any signs of wear and tear. We’ll know about weaknesses in your systems long before they impact operations, giving us ample time to address them before they create costly downtime and up-front costs for replacement parts/components. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.

Make Sure Your Mobile Device Management Platform Has These Features

Businessman hand using laptop and mobile phone on wooden desk

Your mobile device management strategy is going to bleed into every other part of your business, especially in the realms of security and productivity. It is of critical importance that you ensure that your mobile device management platform is working toward your company’s operational goals, but it can be challenging at times to look at this type of technology with its many complications. Let’s dive into what makes for a solid MDM platform.

Now, we know that there are a ton of great features with mobile device management platforms, but there are some that you absolutely should never leave home without, so to speak. Here are just a few of them.

The Ability to Lock and Remotely Wipe Data

While you certainly hope that you never need to wipe your data, this feature is still necessary. If employees lose devices or if someone else steals them, you need to have a plan in place to respond to them. This includes wiping the data from these devices. This ensures that your data privacy remains intact.

Whitelisting and Blacklisting Apps

If your business has employees using mobile devices for company purposes, you should make sure that they are not downloading whatever applications they want. With a company policy in place that governs the use of applications on your mobile devices, you can control the flow of data to external applications and help to minimize data leakage. Plus, if an employee has a list of acceptable applications, they will be less likely to look for their own solutions to specific problems.

Device Tracking and Inventory

Your mobile device management platform should give you the ability to track devices and to know who is using which devices and for what purpose. With the right solution, you can collect information on how the devices are used. It can also provide you with paths to connect with employees should you discover anything about the device that presents a security problem. At the end of the day, you’re not out to breathe down your employees’ necks about how they use their devices; you just want to make sure that the device is being used for the right purposes.

Enforcement of Security Features

Mobile devices, due to their nature, should be protected in as many ways as possible, but don’t stop short at the password. You should also implement features like multi-factor authentication, including biometrics, and powerful encryption tools that can keep data located on such devices locked up tight and safe from prying eyes.

If your business wants to fully leverage the potential of its mobile device management platform, AE Technology Group can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 536-5006.